Love is learned. God’s original plan was to create us to depend continuously on our caregivers during the first years of life. We depend on a caregiver to defend us from several threats until we have enough skills to live in the world. This fact shows the importance that God gives to love among us.
As children, attachment helps us protect ourselves in threatening situations such as a disease, or a fall, in fights with other children, or when separating from our mothers. We cry to seek attention and affection while we are learning how to speak.
Love is learned at home
Ultimately, love is learned, it is a skill that every person can have, and we are all born needing it. This skill is learned through attachment. The feelings of love that are shown, for example, in a smile, a gesture of approval, or a touch, come from a response learned in our relationships with others. Each person has a way to define what love is, since it arises from the totality of what we have lived, and the way we have lived it. This personal way of love is learned from what we observe in our parents or caregivers.
The emotional picture is not encouraging for a person who has been abandoned by his/her parents. The same happens to those who have also been mistreated and even abused in any way. This experience can make closeness harder later in life, but it does not decide how a person’s relationships will turn out. A child’s brain that is evolving, that is moldable, is eager to absorb experiences, and it is also affected by abuse.
Consider Joaquin, a story used here as an illustration (not a client). He did not learn how to love or feel loved in his own home. He grew up feeling insecure and undervalued, without the love that feeling accepted by loved ones can give a person. On many occasions, he repressed his emotions. He tried to look like he felt comfortable and happy, showing the opposite of what he felt: loneliness, discontent, and discomfort.
When love is not learned at home
Hiding feelings of loneliness or of not being loved is very painful for a child. It can happen due to circumstances that force him/her to do so. It generates guilt in his/her mind because he/she does not feel his/her love returned. In a child’s mind, it would be logical to think: “My parents do not love me because I am not good.” That is never the truth: a child is never to blame for not being loved.
Additionally, to make things worse, failing to fulfill other people’s requirements makes children feel ashamed. In Joaquin’s case, abandonment led him to feel awkward among other people, which prevented him from reaching the potential for which he was created: Loving. Love is learned at home.
However, there is good news for you. The brain keeps changing throughout life, and hope, faith, and safe, trusting relationships can support that change. We can learn from hard circumstances, drawing on strengths we may not have known we had. The strength that a person has to go through painful situations, such as the death of a loved one, an accident, or a physical or emotional loss, is often discovered when circumstances demand it.
Not everything is lost
Hope, faith, goodwill, forgiveness, and relationships of trust that endure over time can help a person heal. Healing does not happen all at once, and it is usually easier with other people than alone.
Joaquin could learn how to become a resilient person. Applying an approach based on progress, you can say:
I have finished a stage of my life, and now I must take care of myself. I plan to learn from what I have lived, and I will take my next step at my own pace. Besides, I invite you today to tell yourself: what happened to me does not define me.
Healing does not mean the pain was small; it means you do not have to carry it alone. To think well would be to consider that humanity has survived many adversities, and yet it has rebuilt and found joy again.
With resilience, love is learned
Resilience, the ability to adapt after hardship, can grow with time, support, and safe relationships. Love is learned, and it is not too late to learn how to do it. Many people who have suffered find that the desire for a better life is still there, even when it feels very faint. If it feels gone, tell someone you trust or a professional today.
Perhaps you are that person, like Joaquin in the story from our last post, who has suffered because your parents did not teach you the healing power of love. To keep living despite the setback that has affected your life, you can learn to see yourself as someone who can grow again, step by step. It is not too late to learn how to love, and you do not have to do it alone.
Who is one person you trust, and what is one small way you could let them know you better this week?
Would you like to talk with a professional? Call (407) 559-7093 (Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern) or find professional help here. For general questions that are not an emergency, write to drduany@zodugroup.com. Please do not send health information by email.
If you are in crisis or thinking about hurting yourself, do not wait. Call or text 988 (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24 hours a day, free and confidential). If there is immediate danger, call 911.
This article is for education only. It does not offer diagnosis or personal advice, does not replace evaluation or treatment by a health professional, and reading it or writing to us through this site does not create a therapeutic or pastoral counseling relationship. This site is not an emergency service and is not monitored continuously: do not send health information through comments or public forms. The author is a licensed psychotherapist and pastor, and is part of ZODU.
Keep reading
Emotional IntelligenceCharacter Traits of Resilient Children
Are the characteristics of resilient children different from those of other children? In some ways, yes, though every…
Emotional IntelligenceYou are directed by your subconscious mind
We have been studying the power of the subconscious mind and why it is so difficult for us to grow emotionally. And we…
Emotional IntelligenceWarning Signs of Dating and Marriage Violence
Dating and marriage violence is a reality. Courtship is a stage in the relationship in which people get to know the…